Does Gnutella suffer from a tragedy of the digital commons? Eytan Adar
and Bernardo A. Huberman of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
analyzed user traffic on Gnutella and discovered "a significant amount
of free riding in the system." Nearly half the files shared came from
just 1 percent of hosts -- which suggests something closer to a
traditional client-server model, rather than a peer-to-peer system. It
also suggests that this particular application is not as immune to legal
repercussions as users might boast. When millions of users are trading
copyrighted materials, it's quixotic to imagine bringing the community
to court. But could it be feasible to target the high-volume servers?

We talked with Eytan and asked him to explain what they were looking
for, what they found, and how Gnutella might be improved to overcome the
shortcomings they've identified.

Listen to this discussion (12:11 mins, 2.8 MB):

Eytan Adar
Researcher, Xerox PARC
Digital Freedom Network

"While there's a utopian view of Gnutella and file sharing as this great
thing, we realize that it's possible that the social dilemmas
that affect individuals in the real world mught affect people in the
digital world. Where there's a high cost and a low reward, people are
less likely to conform to some social contract where there's nothing for
them to gain and only things to lose. We decided to look at this in
terms of Gnutella, to see how many people were actually contributing to
the system. Basically what we discovered is that there was a significant
amount of free riding in the system. Over 70 percent of people shared no
files, which is fairly significant."

Richard Koman's WeblogSupreme Court Decides Unanimously Against Grokster
Updating as we go. Supremes have ruled 9-0 in favor of the studios in MGM v Grokster. But does the decision have wider import? Is it a death knell for tech? It's starting to look like the answer is no.
(Jun 27, 2005)